Inspiration doesn’t always strike in the loveliest places. Metal artisan Pam Holthouser was working as an apprentice for a professional painting contractor, lending a hand at a new construction site and hauling discarded bits and pieces to a dumpster, where a new direction for her craftwork awaited.
“I found some metals that gave me the creative lightbulb in my head to build a wind chime,” Holthouser recalls. Now, many chimes later, they’ve become one of her biggest sellers, growing more and more elaborate over time to incorporate beads, gemstones, the odd shell. “As the chimes got bigger and more detailed, the name Zen Chimes seemed appropriate,” she says. Each Zen Chime is different in color and embellishments. But first comes the earthy process: “I bend and cut my own pipe using hacksaws and files.”
Long before her dumpster-diving discovery, Holthouser was designing and crafting unusual pieces from reclaimed materials. As a girl, she made her own skateboard from a pair of old skates and a found piece of wood that she smoothed using her father’s electric sander. Entirely self-taught, she’s used her various employment environments to learn new skills to apply to her mixed media pieces. Shortly after moving to Asheville from Charlotte, “I landed a job at Goose Creek Trading Company in the old Sears building in downtown Asheville,” she recalls. “There, I learned how to carve, wood burn, and paint duck decoys” — all useful for nourishing her attraction to merry-go-rounds. “My passion for carousels came alive when my Dad passed his bandsaw on to me,” she says. Using her new skills, she cut out, carved, and embellished miniature carousel figures from basswood. But what also caught her eye was the wooden plate on which she’d burned the horse figures. “What to do with it but make a clock?” Holthauser remembers thinking.
This led to her inventively constructed clocks displaying her fondness for tarnished gold, bits of car engines, and lawnmowers.
Her apprenticeship with Asheville’s first female professional painting contractor, Billie Williams, taught her about finishes and stains; she applies them to her painted leather art, handmade tiles, and fireplace covers. The tiles and leather sometimes feature in the clocks, too, further adorned with discarded machine parts, wood, or copper.
“Everywhere I go my creative eye is open and looking,” Holthouser notes. “The pieces I find might have a place right then on a project … others will be waiting [for] an upcoming creation.” Chains, cogs, or metal treads may end up in one of her industrial art pieces or as textural add-ons in her encaustic art. “It just depends on the found object,” she says. “I guess you might say the found object tells me what to create.”
Pam Holthouser’s work can be seen at the Eco-Depot Marketplace (408 Depot St. in Asheville), at the Sanctuary of Stuff (440 Weaverville Hwy. in Asheville), at Artisans on Main (14 North Main St. in Weaverville), or online at woodbinedesigns.weebly.com.